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In this week's news round-up; Terraforming Mars is getting a new expansion, new characters are coming to Love Letter, and there is a Game of Thrones social deduction game on the horizon.
Love Letter is back
Love letter, a 2012 release from designer Seiji Kanai, is a well loved and often played micro game. It is a game about eligible young men seeking to woo the princess of Tempest who has locked herself in the palace. It is a game with only 20 cards that is quick to play and hits the table with many gamers and gaming groups.
Z-Man Games have announced that a new version of the game is going to be available and it will contain two new characters, the Chancellor and the Spy. This is a "must" for a lot of gamers' collections due to its small foot print, easy rules and quick play time. The new edition doesn't change any of that but adds additional characters that mix up the gameplay slightly from the base game. Worth seeking out if this is your thing.
And so is Terraforming Mars
It wouldn't be the news if we didn't mention the latest Terraforming Mars (TM) Expansion: Turmoil. Stronghold Games have launched another expansion for TM, and this is tipped to be the biggest and most strategic expansion yet and is intended for the "expert" TM players.
Turmoil adds a political stance to the game with players taking on delegates that they can assign to various political parties. The party with the majority of delegates becomes the ruling party for the next generation, allowing them to set their own policies and give the leader of the party a Terraform Rating. The leader will be given a ruling policy effecting everyone in the game.
The expansion comes with a lot of content including new corporation boards, project cards, global event cards, policies, a Terraforming Committee Board, coloured player delegate cubes, neutral delegate cubes and some promo content stretch goals including dual layer player boards to replace the original flimsy ones that came with the base game.
If you a TM fan and enjoy but looking for a deeper more strategic expansion then this is worth checking out. The campaign is due to finish on the May 2 2019.
Game of Thrones Season 8
Game of Thrones is back on televisions around the world...oh wait...this is board game news right? Well, Renegade Game Studies and Dire Wolf Digital have announced Game of Thrones: Oathbreaker. No, this is not a spin off to the popular TV series but a new social deduction game.
In Oathbreaker, one player is the King with the other players being loyalists, wanting to keep the King in power, or Conspirators who just want chaos. The game is mission-based and at the start of the mission each player secretly contributes influence cards to either help or hinder the mission progress. The King can grant special decrees to players to help or hinder them.
Oathbreaker is set to release in June and looks like a very interesting social deduction game with a theme that is very on topic at the moment for fans of the series.
Digital to Analogue
God of War 4 was a big hit on PlayStation 4 last year. CMON have just announced God of War: The Card Game, a one to four-player game due for release in Q3 of 2019.
Players will take on the role of the Norns, mystical beings determined to stop Ragnarok destroying Midgard. Players take on the roles of Kartos, Mimir, Arteus, Brok, Sindri and Freya. They will fight enemies and powerful bosses from the God of War video games. These enemies and bosses will be combined in different ways to create different scenarios each time the games is played.
Each quest is made up of location cards and monster cards that create a mosaic on the table. Each one has a different mosaic and each card is double-sided with special rules. During the game players will have choices to make about which quests they will complete. One quest might give you a nice bonus but other quests not completed might result in dire consequences.
God of War: The Card Game sounds like a very intriguing game. Fans of the video game will certainly want to check this out but there seems to be more to this game than just the link to the video game franchise making it appealing for the wider audiences.
Enter the Sanctum
Sanctum is a hack and slash epic adventure game for two to four players, inspired by the popular video game Diablo. Players will embark on epic quests to rid the lands of demonic invasions to restore the lands and cities to their former glory. Players will play a Hero, travelling across lands, gathering weapons and equipment, upgrading combat tactics, until they are ready to face off against the Demon Lord. Sanctum features dice rolling but looks like this can be mitigated by the equipment and gear that you equip.
Game play time is estimated at 60-240 minutes depending on player count and will be available sometime in 2019. The game is published by Czech Games Edition (CGE).
Red Raven Games Return
Near and Far, Islebound, Above and Below; all games set in the same universe and Roam is the next in the series. Roam is set in the land of Arzium and has a crossover of characters that are seen in the previous titles.
Players are rescuing lost adventurers and adding them to their party, which further helps them to find more adventurers. The players will travel across six land cards which make up the map/land to be searched. Each player has a unique search pattern that they can use to search the land. Each of the six land cards are split in to six squares which can be searched and used to purchase upgrades and tools. When a land has been completely searched a player can add the adventurer to their party. With the addition of a new adventurer brings new search patterns that a player then has access to.
Roam is currently on Kickstarter, with the campaign ending on April 24.
Mensa Select Winners
A two-day Mensa Mind Games event saw over 300 participants playing the top-rated games released in the past 12 months. The winners of the 2019 Mensa Select Award were given to Architects of the West Kingdom, Gizmos, Gunkimono, Planet and Victorian Masterminds. Massive congratulations to everyone involved.